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Walking Under Water, With a Helmet

By CAROL GRANT GOULD

Published: October 22, 2000

AS a science writer with an aversion to snakes, spiders and scorpions and a closet taste for creature comforts, I jumped at the chance to write the biography of the naturalist and explorer William Beebe when a friend offered me the project. A biographer, I imagined, would just write about scary scientific exploits. Besides, I knew that Beebe -- who began his career in 1899 as curator of ornithology at the newborn Bronx Zoo, went on to found the field of tropical ecology, then became famous in the 1930's by descending more than half a mile below the surface of the ocean in the tiny, fragile bathysphere -- had lived a civilized three-martini life wherever he had worked.

One of those places was Bermuda, scene of Beebe's most famous dives and home of the acclaimed rum swizzle, extolled in Beebe's diary and therefore a fit subject for research. Beebe, who died in 1962, is still looked upon as a native son there, and everyone I met during my visit last May seemed to have known him, or had an aunt, uncle or parent who had. The Bermuda Maritime Museum had a display about him; the beautiful Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute had his dauntingly primitive diving gear. I was invited to tour Beebe's house, to drink tea with ladies who in the 1930's had dated his athletic young students, to visit the workshop of a man who makes Fiberglas models of Beebe's bathysphere.

Then I met Greg Hartley. Greg's dad, Bronson, is the mechanical genius who helped Beebe during his last couple of seasons in Bermuda, in the early 1940's. Most particularly, Bronnie helped with Beebe's groundbreaking coral reef studies, which awakened interest in the unparalleled interdependence of life in the reef community.

At that time, the only way to go under water for any length of time was to use helmets -- tall, heavy metal contraptions with windows that sat on your shoulders and were continuously pumped full of air by energetic and devoted friends in the boat. Once you and the helmet were submerged, you could walk anywhere your air hose-umbilicus would allow. I had always been impressed by Beebe's audacity, and was covertly glad that now that we had scuba, no one helmet-dived any more.

Except Greg. It turned out that when Beebe left, Bronson Hartley began a business taking edgy tourists down in helmets to look at the incredible creatures of the reef, and Greg now runs the operation. His missionary zeal reached out and grabbed my husband, Jim, who determined that to experience the real Beebe world we would obviously have to helmet dive.

I was horrified. I would have to don a wetsuit, which had all the appeal of wrapping myself in a dead fish; jump off a perfectly good boat into water that even Greg admitted was chilly; and walk around on the bottom of the ocean, trusting to the good graces of a compressor that didn't even know me to keep the air coming through the back of the helmet.

Nevertheless, I found myself huddled, with a small but valiant group of tendertoes trying to look brave, on the deck of Greg's nifty boat, staring at a row of tall coppery helmets that made me think of a faceless Ivanhoe getting ready to fight a ghostly Front de Boeuf. On the way out to the reef, Greg briefed us on what we could expect, and what we had to do. He delivered this information with the gung-ho yet ho-hum manner of a sergeant haranguing recruits.

We all asked the ritual questions: ''What if the air hose breaks?'' ''What if I want to go back?'' ''What if there's a shark (ho ho ho)?''

Greg started herding us into wetsuits, sizing up each victim with an expert eye. The woman in front of me, though having a good six inches and 45 pounds on me, demanded the last small one, leaving me with a number that hung in clammy folds. Fortunately, everyone's eyes were riveted on the other woman struggling into her suit. Greg let her get it completely on before unzipping it and telling her it was on backwards.

We went over the side in pairs, which was a good thing. If I hadn't had Jim to steady my nerves, as well as all those other anxious divers watching, I would have pleaded a headache and gone back on deck. But pride wins over discretion on most battlefields, and down I went.

Greg and his associate time it carefully so that the helmet, which weighs a lot, settles on your shoulders just as you go under, the water helping bear the weight. You go down the ladder without the helmet until the water just reaches your chest, and then you're entombed in copper and glass, the compressed air keeping the water out. At first it is stunningly silent; then the noisy bubbles force their way in with periodic loud blasts: bubble-bubble-pop, then silence until the next burst. Noisy, but reassuring.

Soon we were down about 15 feet, actually walking on the sandy bottom within arm's reach of a wall of coral, surrounded by curious fish nudging and posing for underwater photos. As we walked along in single file, Greg held up a clever multisided stick that told us what we were seeing at any given point. ''Sergeant Major,'' the stick announced when a brightly striped cartoon fish zipped by. ''Squirrel Fish,'' it said when a nosy orange critter adopted my husband.

One by one, fish who had known Greg and his bait belt for years came to be stroked, tickled and fed. A graceful yellow and blue Queen angelfish, about eight inches tall, nibbled on my knuckles. Stormin' Norman, a gigantic gray snapper, seemed to enjoy being held between our bare hands.

GREG showed us the corals: brain corals, stinging corals, mushroom corals and sea fans. And we got to feed them, too: he scraped our fingernails over an open mussel shell, and held our fingers so that the nails just touched a large brain coral. And it ate! A barely perceptible tickling of tiny feelers, reaching out for minute particles of mussel.

Then, holding a piece of fish up to a scarcely noticeable hole in the reef, he lured out Franklin, a moray eel. Franklin is moody, Greg told us later, and doesn't always humor visitors, but when he does it is an honor. Franklin graciously allowed us to stroke him, looking into our helmeted visages with small, wise eyes, showing rows of tiny, even, sharp teeth but never using them. No, everything we felt about this creature was soft: the long, firm, relaxed body was covered with the softest material I have ever felt. Unlike the slimy-scaly and nervous Norman, Franklin was poised peau de soie. Everyone wanted to hold him again, but he finally retreated into his lair.

The walk back to the ladder was reluctant. The reef loomed over us, a vast, silent underwater apartment house packed with tenants of incredible strangeness, beauty and diversity. We were overcome by awe, by a sense of wonder, of peace; humbled by what we had seen, empowered by what we had done. And we hadn't even gotten our hair wet!

That descent was miles away -- 700 literal miles, and light-years as the mind runs -- from our home in New Jersey. Now, though, as I write about Beebe's unflagging childlike appreciation of the life he saw under water, it is no longer amazing to me that he went down. The wonder is that he ever came up.

Photo: The author, right, and her husband, Jim, on their excursion with equipment like the kind used 60 years ago. (Greg Hartley)

CAROL GRANT GOULD is the author, most recently, of ''The Animal Mind'' (Scientific American Libary).

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